Local TV blackout

My Minnesota Vikings have one of their biggest games in a while this afternoon, with their first trip to the playoffs in four years. Unfortunately, the NFL blackout rules apply in our home for a very simple reason -- we don't have TV.

Anne and I have always persisted stubbornly without cable/satellite TV. This worked out relatively well in Oakland. We could get most of the major networks (although the time that NBC moved its transmitter right before the Olympics was pretty annoying) plus a handful of local channels that showed things like Cantonese news and Cheaters. We figured this was entertainment enough, so we never plunked down the extra money for cable.

Things changed when we moved to Vermont. We could no longer rely on getting a signal with our set-top rabbit ears. I've heard rumors of getting PBS in Poultney, but haven't had any luck myself. Nevertheless, we decided to save the money and go without TV. Now it's not like we're those people who condescendingly say "Well, we don't watch TV" because the truth is we watch a lot of TV. We just have to watch it all on DVD. Like a lot of our neighbors, we are now devoted Netflix subscribers. This works out pretty well because it's about half the price of cable, and we get to choose what we want to watch. Especially now that Watch Instantly is available for the Mac, it's almost like having live TV coming into our house. OK, not quite, but it's getting there.

But that still leaves us in the cold when it comes to live sports. I had to "watch" the Vikings finally clinch a playoff spot against the Giants with ESPN's ridiculous Gamecast, and had to put Matt and Cascade through the same to watch their beloved Beavers in the Sun Bowl last week. If you think football is slow and boring, try watching it this way. Unfortunately, the local pub is closed on Sunday and Monday (prime football watching days), so I have seen very little football since I moved here.

[A funny thing happened to us shortly after we moved here related to our lack of TV. I got a call from AC Nielsen asking us to track our TV watching. I told the woman that we didn't have TV reception, so our data wouldn't be too useful. She seemed a bit bemused, but said to go ahead and complete the survey anyway. Now I've always wanted to be a Nielsen family and help influence which shows stay on the air and which get cancelled. I'm convinced that if I'd been tracking my TV viewing a couple years ago, Arrested Development would still be on the air. (Not that it would do me any good without television.) My stepdad suggested I fill out the form in the spirit of OJ Simpson: this is what I would have watched had I watched TV. Instead, I just left all of the time slots blank and sent it back. Anne and I were paid $20 for our trouble, which seemed like a pretty fair compensation.]

There's a big TV antenna on top of our barn, and if I ever get the motivation, I might actually try to see if I can get it to work. We went ahead and got one of the government-subsidized digital converters for our analog TV, so we're poised to have television in our home again. In the meantime, Anne and I will make the trip up to Rutland and the nearest sports bar to watch this afternoon's game. Skol, Vikings!

The trashiest show you're not watching

Clear your calendar for tonight at nine and plant yourself in front of a TV tuned to the CW, because One Tree Hill is on. The last few weeks, Anne and I have gotten seriously (and a little sheepishly) sucked into this show. We're both suckers for teen soaps, so we've intermittently watched it since it came on the air a couple years ago. Now, with the Beauty and the Geek lead-in, we've become regulars. You know the cliche about how some shows are so bad, they're good? Well, if you like teen soap cliches, you'll love this one. Imagine the bastard love child of Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place fostered by Dawson's Creek. If you've not seen this show, you're seriously missing out.

In the first episode we saw during this recent phase, a pregnant girl got hit by a car leading to a chain of events that saw the driver beaten to death and the killer's father taking the blame. Meanwhile, just down the street, Lucas, this show's Dawson, collapsed from a heart condition and entered a dream world where his mom's dead boyfriend showed him the scene of a murder that we're being led to believe was committed by the guy who took the blame for the beating death of the drunk driver I mentioned earlier. This same murderer happens to be Lucas' dad, but refused to acknowledge him for many years. Follow all that? Well, there's no need to. Just watch and get sucked into the wild mix of over-the-top melodrama and angst-wracked, teen soliloquizing. All of the teenage characters are played by actors who are about 25, none of them seems to live at home, and the villains and heroes are painted with as broad a brush as possible. Oh, and one of the female leads is an avid record collector, which is HOTTT!

I can't say if we'll continue watching it after this week's final episode of B&TG (although America's Next Top Model fans take note -- when your favorite cat-fight comes back, it airs right before OTH), but we're enjoying it while it lasts. And if I still haven't convinced you, here are three words that describe the final moments of last week's episode: "Sex tape revelation." Enjoy!

Once More With Feeling

Warning: for my first post in a couple weeks, I'll be channeling my inner geek. You've been warned.

We don't often get out on weeknights these days, but last night the Parkway had a Buffy mini-marathon, so we had to go. This was the second or third of the Parkway's monthly Joss Whedon nights, and the first we'd been able to make it to. They showed "Once More with Feeling," "Tabula Rasa," and "Hush." (And if that means anything to you, then you would have fit right in.)

It was of a lot of fun to see Buffy in a larger than life format, especially in a crowded theater. But it was also an interesting cultural experience because the Buffy-night really brought out the geeks. When the opening credits of the first episode rolled, Anne leaned over to me and whispered "I feel like I belong!" There was a huge crowd when we arrived an hour before it started, and we were actually worried we weren't going to get in. The show had sold out about 15 minutes before we got there, and some people had gotten in line over 2 hours earlier. Luckily, they managed to find room for us and maybe 20 more people. We were in a row of chairs up against the back of the theater, and we had to use a box that Anne found in a hallway to hold our pizza and beer, but at least we got in.

Here are some highlights, mainly for my Buffy-geek readers:

Everyone hissing when Michelle Trachtenberg showed up during the opening credits.

During Anya's solo about bunnies, someone pelted members of the audience with stuffed rabbits. It was a little Rocky Horror, but I can't complain because we came away with a nice, plush Peter Rabbit.

The scene in "Hush" where Giles uses transparencies to describe how they're going to deal with the Gentlemen. I think it's my favorite scene in all of Buffy.

The guy in the Sunnydale High shirt standing next to me in the food line casually telling a friend that he'd "come with two Willows."

Mike Patton on All My Children

I just heard about this hilarious clip from All My Children. In it, the protagonists are trying to convince rocker "Zarf" to shill their line of cosmetics. He's not buying, so one of them (I kid you not) launches into a minute-long discussion of her love for Mike Patton (Faith No More, Mr. Bungle), which wins over "Zarf" (I feel I have to put his name in quotes every time). "Zarf's" reaction to the mention of Mike Patton is almost as awesome as hearing this much time given over to him on a daytme soap. As a super-awesome follow-up, when I mentioned this story to Anne last night, she informed me that "Zarf" is now the first transgendered character on a daytime soap opera, having made the switch to womanhood recently. (For Anne's sake, I should add that she only found this out by reading about it in the Chronicle.)